Learn how advances in geospatial technology and analytical methods have changed how we do everything, and discover how to make maps and analyze geographic patterns using the latest tools. The past decade has seen an explosion of new mechanisms for understanding and using location information in widely-accessible technologies. This Geospatial Revolution has resulted in the development of consumer GPS tools, interactive web maps, and location-aware mobile devices. These radical advances are making it possible for people from all walks of life to use, collect, and understand spatial information like never before. This course brings together core concepts in cartography, geographic information systems, and spatial thinking with real-world examples to provide the fundamentals necessary to engage with Geography beyond the surface-level. We will explore what makes spatial information special, how spatial data is created, how spatial analysis is conducted, and how to design maps so that they’re effective at telling the stories we wish to share. To gain experience using this knowledge, we will work with the latest mapping and analysis software to explore geographic problems.
Lesson 5 - Lecture 1
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From the course by The Pennsylvania State University
Maps and the Geospatial Revolution
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From the lesson
Making Great Maps
Explore the key elements of effective cartographic design.
Meet the Instructors
Dr. Anthony C. RobinsonLead Faculty for Online Geospatial Education
Department of Geography
This is Lecture 1 for Lesson 5. Making great maps is all about
understanding cartography. And cartography is the art and science of
making maps. It's those two very different things kept
in tension that make cartography fun. Maps are always simplifications of
reality, and cartographers wrestle with that problem.
And simplification is what makes maps helpful when we need to make a decision,
explain patterns, or even find a bucket of delicious fried chicken.
Maps are ultimately designed by people who have intentions like you and me, and
we have to map responsibly. Here are four examples of how you can
tell a different story with the same basic data using maps.
These are all from a book called Making Maps, by John Krygier and Dennis Wood.
A really nice little cartography textbook.
Each of these maps shows the same fundamental thing.
It shows the proposed impact of building a new connector road between two major
roads in a small town. The first map on the left shows how that
connector road might go through an area with relatively low property values.
Which from a developer prospective might be good.
The second map shows how that same connector road would go through an
African-American neighborhood and bifurcate the community.
Which would be bad. The third map shows how that same
connector road would actually impact an historic district.
And finally, the fourth map, on the right shows how that connector road would
actually go around the densest area of business activity in the city.
Which could be bad for business. So, each of these four maps is
legitimate, right? And there's no reason you couldn't make
these maps. And they fundamentally talk about the
same basic story about what might this connector road do to this small town.
But you can tell that there are very different stories that you could tell
with these different maps. And it's up to you as the cartographer to
make a good decision about how you design these things.
You have to answer three key questions when you get started with mapping.
The first one is who wants your map? Is it ten experts, is it 20,000 people
you've never met before in a MOOC? That's pretty important to figure out.
You gotta know where it will be seen. Is it going to be seen on a small piece
of paper? Does it need to be printed in black and
white? Or is it going to show up in a web map
that might be used on a phone, a tablet, a regular laptop, or even on a giant
screen in Times Square. You gotta know the output format.
You also really need to understand what's the purpose of the map?
What story are you trying to tell? Or what context are you trying to create
for someone else to tell the story? Is it to explain how your down has
changed over time? That would be pretty hard to do.
Or is it designed to help somebody plan a pub crawl?
That might be a little bit easier. Each of these questions deserves a really
well thought out answer before you begin mapping.
One of the first things you begin doing when you make a map is designing a
layout. And really what you want to try to get is
a balance layout. The map you have, maybe you have multiple
maps on one page. The title, legend, scale bar, source
text, images, all kinds of other stuff you might jam on there.
All of those elements need to be positioned and sized relative to one
another. That's really the key thing about
designing the layout. The goal here is really to shape that
general layout design around the answers that you have to those three general
design questions. Here's an example of a really poorly
design layout, from Designing Better Maps, which is a great guide book by
Cindy Brewer. And she created this example to show a
bad layout first, and I'll show you a good one in a second.
So, this layout doesn't really have any structure, does it?
It's got a title and source information and it has three different, little maps.
But there's not really any creative use of the page here, right?
It's just all kind of slammed together. Contrast that to this which is the same
exact set of elements laid out in a nice visual hierarchy on the page.
And here everything nests together nicely, so that the flow of the
information is very clear. This is a great example of how to take
something that's not too good, like the original image, and make something really
nice out of it. Just by tweaking the layout itself.
So, layout stuff's important. Another really imporant aspect of map
making is figuring out how you're going to simbolize things.
And symbolization is really about simplifying reality.
We have to use symbols to represent features quite often.
Points, lines, and polygons can all be graphically manipulated to explain data.
And symbolization can either emphasize the visual connection to a real feature,
so it could look like the thing it's supposed to be, like a coffee cup,
represent a coffee, place to get coffee. Or they can be very abstract.
I might use a star to indicate that this is the capital city for a country.
Not that capital cities for countries every look like stars, right?
Here's an example of simple point symbols that do use some of those iconic kind of
things to show you where things are. This is a wonderful little regional map
that I've made of one of my favorite places.
This is Lower Mapistan. And it shows the locations of Silky
Lattes, Fancy Hotels, and Delicious Breakfasts.
This is the kind of map I would need if I'm on a road trip somewhere, for
example. You can also do things with point symbols
where you derive the symbol's size and shape itself by the underlying data.
You've seen this in class already. On the left here, I have proportional
symbols and on the right I have graduated symbols.
They're the same kind of symbol, they're both circles.
On the left, I have people currently unable to pay the cable bill.
And these symbols are sized in proportion to the original data values.
I set a minimum size, and then I let the symbol get bigger and I let that be
proportional to the actual data value of that place.
On the right hand side in contrast, I set three different symbol sizes.
And then, I have each one of those symbol sizes correspond to a range of data
values. So, basically there's a category, right?
And as you can see on the left, it's a little bit hard to compare some of the
mid and smaller sized values. Because they're not exactly all the same
size, right? You get a better sense with proportional
symbols of the true diversity of the underlying data.
Whereas on the right with the graduated symbols, it's easier to compare things,
because you have just a few set symbol sizes.
And visually it's pretty easy to pick out the low, the medium, and the high stuff.
So, there are good reasons to use both of these methods with point symbology.
Finally, there's multivariate symbols. And in this particular case I'm looking
at answers to this very important survey about how do you roll.
That's the question I'm answering here. So, some people roll downhill.
Some people roll on 22s. And some people roll laid back style.
Lower Mapistan is a diverse place. And so, these multivariate symbols here
are just pie charts, right. You could use bar charts, and there's
tons of other methods that are possible. Maybe you could think of some and post
some of your own ideas in the forums, and then let me know how it is that you roll.
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